Huge growth in worldwide TT audience in 2013

Audience figures released on the 2013 Isle of Man TT races are showing a significant increase on last year's statistics with television, radio, print media coverage and the on-line audience all experiencing double digit growth year on year.

ITV4 has reported that the North One TV shows are nearly 20% up overall on last year's viewers with well over six million people watching this year's programmes, an increase of almost a million on the 2012 audience.

The most watched show was Monday’s Monster Energy Supersport 1 show with an average of 684,000 and a peak of 725,000 – about three times the slot average and benchmark audience share.

This year also saw next day highlights programmes screened in the USA via Discovery Velocity and with further international markets also reporting increased viewing figures, the worldwide TV audience is also expected to increase significantly by year end.

Neil Duncanson, Chief Executive, North One TV commented:

"The TT Races is now one of ITV's key sports properties and their executives are really pleased with this year's audience figures. Although it is still early days, our international partners are also reporting growth which bodes well for future distribution."

The official iomtt.com website, run by Duke Marketing, is reporting growth across a number of key international territories with a significant increase in the number of users tracking the event through live timing as well as an overall year on year increase in the number of unique users.

Over the two weeks of practice and racing over 1,000,000 unique users visited the official Isle of Man TT website www.iomtt.com creating 7.6 million page views. This compares positively with same period in 2012, which saw just under 800,000 users. The website’s live timing service, TT Live was accessed by around 200,000 fans across the world.

Social media proved very popular with the total number of people following the official Isle of Man TT facebook page growing to over 140,000 during the race period and twitter users up to nearly 40,000. Approximately 750,000 people saw messages posted to the official facebook page – a near doubling on TT 2012’s figures while the new new online TT shop (shop.iomtt.com) also saw notable growth.

Across the various online platforms a strong trend towards the growth of a global fanbase continued. Britain and America continue to be the largest sources for online fans but countries such as Brazil, India, Japan, Poland and Italy are contributing an ever-increasing number of a fans.

The new Isle of Man TT Races App, created by Agency Mobile, was downloaded 73,000 times across the race fortnight and was the most downloaded sports app on iTunes during the event and the second highest grossing sports app. There were a total of 1.4 million active 'sessions' with 13,000 active daily users.

As well as providing live timing, the app also offered access to the Manx Radio TT commentary, further boosting the number of people listening to the live race commentary. This year there were 1.86 million successful connections to the various digital services provided by Manx Radio via iomtt.com and the TT Races App. These listeners are in addition to the audience who listened live via the dedicated 1368AM service and FM broadcasts available on the Island.

Mannin Media, producers of the TT races official programme reported that the programme sales, through on-line and retail outlets, were up a total of 9.5% year-on-year, the highest circulation since the Centenary TT races in 2007. This year also saw the introduction of Mannin's ‘digital TT review magazine which is now available for I-pad, android and Kindle tablets.

Laurence Skelly, Political Member, Isle of Man Tourism, commented:

"The TT Races now provides a real profile and platform for the Isle of Man worldwide as well as generating visitors to the Isle of Man. We are able to use the different media channels that we have to promote our Island's culture and heritage as well as building a worldwide fanbase for the TT Races and generate incremental commercial revenue."